The Sweetness in the Lime

by Stephen Kimber

  So what should I suggest Charles and his wife do on their last night in the city that might earn me yet another five-star rating on Tripadvisor? I’d already endeared myself to Charles by hooking him up with my friend David for his architect’s tour of Havana. I’d met David back in 2008 during my first wonderful, awful, wonderfully awful, awfully wonderful trip to Cuba. In the beginning, I thought David was…and then I learned…. It’s strange how wrong a person can be. I’m still not sure I understand what motivates David’s boss, Lío, who remains an enigma. Schemer? Samaritan? No matter. David and I are now friends. Lío too, I think. Whenever I can, I send our guests David’s way. He’s an excellent guide. But today, David had trumped even himself, arranging for Charles and Sandra to visit La Escuela Taller Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, an innovative vocational school in Old Havana that trains young Cubans in the traditional crafts required to rescue and restore the old city’s significant but crumbling buildings, monuments, and infrastructure.

  “It was amazing,” Charles the Carpenter gushed after they returned to the casa last night. “Just amazing.”

  I was amazed too. At the absurdity anyone would ask my advice on what to do on their last night in Havana.

  “San Cristóbal,” I suggest finally.

  “What’s that?” Charles asks.

  “A paladar, a restaurant in a private house. It’s near here,” I explain. “Serves excellent Cuban dishes with a little Spanish flavouring. The Obamas ate there. So did Jay Z and Beyoncé.” Mariela and I—full disclosure—have eaten there twice, though I don’t mention that to Charles.

  Charles laughs, rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “I’m a retired carpenter, buddy, not a millionaire.”

  I try to explain. While paladars like San Cristóbal might well be beyond the financial reach of ordinary salary-paid Cubans, a complete meal there, with drinks and dessert, would probably cost Charles and Sandra much less than a much worse dinner at Ruby Tuesdays in Bayonne.

  “With the seniors’ discount?” he asks.

  “With the seniors’ discount,” I reply.

  “Sold.”

  Welcome to Cuba

  Havana, Winter 2008

  1

  “Good evening, Señor Cooper.” My surprise must have been obvious. “I’m good with names,” the man said. He was. I wasn’t. The bell captain had introduced himself (René? Ricky? Roberto?…some “R” name) when he’d grabbed my bag at the registration desk three days earlier and delivered it to my pool-view room.

  This vacation had been a mistake. I should have known that on that middle-of-the-night morning when I found myself stranded, solo, in the Halifax airport, surrounded by bleary-eyed, winter-wilted couples, all dressed incongruously in summer shorts or pedal pushers, sandals or flip-flops, each shielded from the airport waiting room’s fluorescent glare by their Ray-Bans, and/or straw hats. I had dressed in sensible winter overcoat and boots. Because it was winter! I’d unceremoniously stuffed my beachwear—an old bathing suit I wasn’t sure still fit, a pair of cut-off blue-jean shorts, a few never-worn Trib T-shirts, two pairs of greying white socks, and a pair of rarely worn sandals—into my checked duffel.

  When the sign-waving tour representatives greeted us at Varadero airport, I discovered I was the only un-coupled passenger on the bus to Jibacoa. Halfway between Varadero and Havana, Jibacoa was an adults-only resort Sarah had chosen for my forget-it-all two weeks. It had been easier than I’d expected to forget it all, or at least those parts to do with my father and with the job that was no longer mine. It was far more difficult not to notice how alone I was. On the beach. At the buffet. At the bars. At the evening cabaret. Even the couples who looked unhappy in each other’s company—and many did—had each other’s company. That any of this should have bothered me surprised—and bothered—me. I had understood aloneness to be my natural, desired state.

  By the end of the second day, I’d finished all the books I brought with me—Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, which I remembered reading years before and liking, but couldn’t now recall why, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which had been on the syllabus for an English course I’d enrolled in at university but never attended, and Elmore Leonard’s Cuba Libre, which I’d picked up on a whim at a used bookstore the day before my flight, and which turned out to be, as the clerk advertised, a “great beach book.”

  After I read them all, I visited the resort’s gift shop looking for more diversionary reading, only to discover I was not just in a different country but a different reality. There were no John Grishams, no James Pattersons. All the books were political, most in Spanish. For some reason, neither Guerrilla Warfare: The Authorized Edition by Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, nor Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today by Fidel Castro—both available in English—seemed much like a beach read. Not that I normally read beach books. But what else was there to do at a beach resort?

  Drink. “It’s an all-inclusive,” my sister told me, “so you won’t need cash.” I didn’t. Except for tips. “No need,” Luis, the bartender at the piano bar, said, holding up his hand when I tried to give him one of my few remaining Canadian five-dollar bills. But he’d taken it anyway. Luis had more than earned his tip with an erudite explanation of why the bar didn’t stock my usual rum of choice.

  “Not Cuban.”

  “Really?” I had always assumed Bacardi was Cuban.

  “They were,” Luis confided. “But they ran away to Miami after the Revolution. Now they make their rum in Puerto Rico. It’s not the same, not as good.” He reached under the counter, took out a bottle of fifteen-year-old Havana Club. “Auténtico! This is real Cuban rum,” he said, pouring a double shot into a snifter, swirling it around in the glass, placing his nose above the glass, inhaling, smiling, and handing it to me like an especially good joint.

  I took a sip.

  “Better than Bacardi?” Luis asked.

  “Better than Bacardi,” I answered. I wasn’t sure. I was a rum drinker, not a connoisseur, but when in Cuba…. On second sip, I thought I could taste something caramel and warm. I’d seen Havana Club bottles in the gift shop for less than ten CUCs. CUCs—pronounced “kooks”—seemed to be a peculiarly Cuban currency designed for use by tourists, its value pegged to the American dollar. I needed to find a banking machine, get some “kooks.”

  More importantly, I needed to escape this stultifying, coupled resort in which I was uncoupled, unmoored. I had considered signing up for an off-resort day trip, but none of the destinations appealed to me—except Havana. But the weekly Havana bus adventure had already departed and returned before I knew it existed.

  “Try registration,” one of the excursion coordinators suggested. “Someone there may be able to find you a ride.”

  Which was what brought me to the bell captain. “No problem, Mr. Cooper,” René-Ricky-Roberto said. “How long you stay?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t know.

  “Place to stay? Hotel? Casa?”

  “No thanks. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

  “OK.” The bellhop looked skeptical. “Drive back?”

  “I’ll find one.”

  “No problem, Mr. Cooper. I have a friend, Virgilio. He travels to Havana all the time. I’ll call him for you. Tomorrow afternoon, after lunch, he’ll meet you. Just go outside the entrance, turn left and walk along the highway. Keep walking and Virgilio will pick you up.”

  I must have looked skeptical. “Don’t worry, Mr. Cooper.” He winked conspiratorially. “It’s just how we do things in Cuba.”

  ****

  I did as the bellhop instructed. I turned left up the narrow country highway and began walking. How long before the bellhop’s friend would pick me up? Would he? Was there a friend? How long had I been walking? I should have put on sunscreen. “Cooper?” Lost in my own interior monologue, I’d failed to notice a lime-green-a
nd-white, nineteen-fifty-something Cadillac materialize beside me.

  “Vir-gee-ill—?” I tried.

  “Virgilio. You call me Lío,” the man in the car said. He was dark-skinned, bald-headed, of indeterminate age, wearing mirrored, wraparound sunglasses and a broad smile that showcased a gold front tooth. He reached behind himself to open the car’s rear door. There was no handle on the door’s exterior. I slid into the back seat and felt the strangely familiar, stick-to-your-skin, fitted clear plastic seat coverings. My father had had the same ones when I was a kid! That’s when I noticed someone else in the car, a woman in the front passenger seat. She was young, late twenties, early thirties maybe, her long black hair parted in the middle, pulled back.

  “My niece, Mariela,” the driver said. “Give her ride to Havana. OK?”

  “Sure.”

  The woman turned and flashed me the briefest of white-toothed smiles. She had thin, lightly glossed pink lips, smooth olive skin, and thick, sharply defined black eyebrows that showcased the most stunning emerald green eyes. They reminded me of that famous National Geographic cover of the Afghan woman whose eyes seem to glow. I would have stared, but she’d immediately turned her head back toward the highway.

  “Where from?” Lío asked.

  “Canada.”

  “Oh, Canada! Many friends in Canada. Toronto? Vancouver?”

  “Halifax,” I answered before he ran out of place names he knew. “East coast.”

  “Cold?” Lío simulated a shiver.

  “Yes.”

  “First time in Cuba?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like?”

  “Very much,” I lied. Then I remembered the question I’d forgotten to ask the bellhop. “How much?” I asked. “The ride? How much?”

  “One hundred CUCs.” Lío said it confidently, matter of fact. I thought the bartender at the piano bar said it should cost no more than eighty. Not that it mattered. I didn’t have any cash, Canadian or CUCs.

  “I’ll need to stop at a banking machine when we get to Havana,” I said.

  Lío looked back. “No cash?”

  “No. But I have money. I just need to find a machine.”

  “No easy in Cuba,” Lío told me. “What kind of card?”

  “MasterCard.”

  “Maybe…depends….”

  As we drove in silence, my attention focused on the verdant swaths of rolling green between the highway and the azure waters of whatever body of water. Was Florida beyond the horizon? We passed an incongruous oil derrick near the shoreline. Did Cuba produce oil? I could have asked Lío, but I didn’t. How could I have ever imagined myself a journalist if I couldn’t even articulate my own curiosity?

  “See,” Lío said, pointing at the derrick, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “Canada company. Forget name. Joint venture. All joint venture.” We passed a town. “Santa Cruz del Norte,” Lío continued his random guided tour. “Many lives here. Work in resort…. Also, Havana Club factory. Make dark rum. You have?” He mimicked putting a glass to his lips.

  “Yes.”

  “Is good?”

  “Yes. Good.”

  “But not best, Cooper. Ron Santiago is best. I get you some?”

  “Sounds good.” Was Lío trying to sell me rum? I should have said I was fine, thanks.

  “Reynaldo say you spend few days in Havana, see real Havana?”

  Reynaldo! So that was his name. “I do.”

  “Where you stay?”

  “No place yet. I was thinking of the Hotel Nacional….”

  “Yes, yes. Good choice. Mafia! Meyer Lansky! Godfather! Bang. Bang.” Had Lío seen the movie?

  “They take credit cards, right?” I was still trying to wrap my mind around Lío’s doubts. Who didn’t accept credit cards these days?

  “Credit card? Not probably. But CADECA in basement. I show you.” CUCs…CADECA…suddenly, the woman reached across, touched Lío on the shoulder, nodded in the direction of the road ahead.

  “Sí,” he said, turning his head back toward me. “Cooper. Need you stay down back seat. For minute.”

  I did as I was told, not knowing why. I sensed the car slowing down, then picking up speed.

  “OK, Cooper.” I realized Lío must think Cooper was my first name. “Up now.”

  I looked around. Nothing seemed untoward. I turned my head back in the direction from which we’d come. I saw a sign over the highway, a man in a uniform beside the highway.

  “Checkpoint is all,” Lío explained cheerfully. “No legal me have you in car.” He tugged on his non-existent beard. “Just rule. No one care…Unless they do. And then trouble. But me, not you. You OK.”

  The woman turned to me. “There’ll be a few more before we get to Havana. But I’ll try to let you know sooner,” she said. She spoke better English than Lío—maybe better than me.

  “So what you want do in Havana?” It was Lío again.

  “I don’t know. I’ll just wander around, see the city.”

  “Havana interesting, but can be confusing if you no know,” Lío said, then smiled as if an idea had just struck him. “Need tour guide? Mariela best tour guide in Havana. Show you what you want. Anything.”

  Mariela looked back at me, embarrassed.

  “No, no, that’s OK,” I answered. I wasn’t sure whether Lío was trying to be helpful, or setting me up for a scam, or if he had just offered his niece for sale.

  “Yes, Cooper, of course. Understand.” Had I unfairly assumed the worst of the man?

  “We’re coming up to another checkpoint,” Mariela said, smiling back at me. Why hadn’t I said yes to her as my guide. “You’ll need to duck your head.”

  After she gave me the all-clear again, Lío and Mariela drifted into an easy conversation in a rapid Spanish I couldn’t begin to understand. I was surprised at how smoothly Mariela had slipped from one language to the other. When I was in high school, I’d taken Spanish for a semester but never got beyond, Me llamo Eli…encantado de conocerte. Was I too old to learn now?

  Lío drove on, past what looked like a highway toll booth—this one with no toll takers, no police, no ducking my head, no slowing down—and disappeared down into a tunnel that swallowed up Lío’s car. We must have crossed under a body of water and, just as suddenly, were spit out into Old Havana. After an hour and a half of nothing but empty highways, vacant green, and endless blue, emerging from the tunnel’s subterranean darkness into Havana’s bright, noisy, late afternoon urban other world, filled with vintage American cars, stinking exhaust, honking horns, people of all shades and hues, beautiful, crumbling Spanish architecture…seemed like some sort of revelation. But what had been revealed?

  “Welcome to Havana,” Mariela said.

  2

  “Decide,” Lío instructed grandly, filling one shot glass with a last gulp from a bottle of Havana Club Añejo Reserva and plunking it down on the kitchen table beside a second small tumbler already filled to the rim from the bottle of Santiago de Cuba Ron Añejo Lío had carried in from his car. “Keep with me always,” he joked.

  “So, Cooper,” my even newer best friend, Esteban, instructed, “you decide which is best. Lío’s Ron Santiago? Or my Havana Club?”

  I wasn’t sure I could drink any more rum. I’d already polished off three mojitos since we’d burst into Esteban’s kitchen, unannounced but apparently expected, a few hours earlier. “My friend Esteban,” Lío had said, by way of cryptic introduction. “Make best mojitos in all Havana.”

  It turned out—as best I could understand from a Spanglish conversation I couldn’t really understand—Esteban worked for Havana Club in some sort of marketing capacity. That explained his kitchen full of Havana Club paraphernalia—shot glasses, bottle openers, T-shirts, ball caps—and the shelf filled with Havana Club rum bottles of many colours and ages. He handed me a
red Havana Club baseball cap to officially welcome me to Havana.

  Esteban opened another bottle then, generously sprinkled some of its contents in a corner on the kitchen floor. “For the gods,” he said to me. “Santería tradition.”

  “Let the gods clean it up then,” Esteban’s wife, Silvia, responded, smiling, mock-angry, reaching for a mop.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  ****

  After Lío dropped off Mariela outside a sketchy-looking building downtown, I had finally seen the rest of her and was impressed. We then drove along the Malecón, the highway that runs alongside the Bay of Havana, to the imposing, turreted Hotel Nacional. We parked on a street nearby and walked up the long driveway toward the hotel. After Lío engaged an official-looking man at the hotel entrance in a brief, businesslike conversation, Lío led me down a back staircase to the basement and a small, glass-fronted kiosk with a sign that read CADECA, which I learned later was short for casa de cambio, which was Spanish for where you exchange your money. I was catching on.

  “Show card,” Lío instructed. I did, sliding my MasterCard through the opening.

  “Cuánto?” the bored woman behind the glass asked.

  “How much?” Lío translated.

  “Five hundred. CUCs.” When in Cuba.

  While the woman went about her business, Lío quizzed me about my life in Canada, why I had chosen Cuba, why I was travelling alone. I offered my best non-answers. I had a job with a newspaper, I explained, without explaining the nuances of “had.” Having decided I needed a vacation from winter, I had picked Cuba because it seemed interesting, leaving out the dead father–generous sister wrinkle. I was here alone because I wasn’t in a relationship at the moment, a moment, I also failed to mention, that had lasted more than thirty-five years.

  “Want woman?” Lío asked solicitously. “Can get. Very nice.” His arms traced a shapely woman’s figure.